BobP

I use adhesive lead tape designed to weight the head of tennis rackets. It's the thinnest I've found. It gives you a wider range of options on where to put it and it makes fine tuning the weight easy; stick it on, float test the lure, cut a little off until you get it perfect. Then smooth down the edges of the tape until it blends into the body shape. When you paint the lure's belly, the white paint will make it disappear. They sell something similar to weight golf club heads but it's thicker and harder to hide.

Yeah, but it's all in the way you look at it. It might have to do with a manufacturing process that we know nothing about, or maybe a balsa body was the way the bait was originally developed and the end product just reflects that. Who knows? The important thing is how it it swims and how the fish like it.

I'd try it as a final effect over the basic pattern. I use an airbrush acrylic called chrome pearl for the same thing - it gives the bait a "baitfish sheen" and mutes the underlying color scheme into a more naturalistic whole. As with any different brand, "your mileage may vary".

You can buy bare balsa bodies but I've never seen balsa baits that are ready to paint. The best I can do is recommend repainting a finished balsa crankbait.

I think it's a choice like whether to wear just a belt or maybe a belt AND suspenders. I glue lips in with epoxy and have never had one come out of a bass lure. If you want to improve adhesion, you can sand the part of the lip that will go into the slot and/or cut a couple of small slots in the back of the lip, which will fill with epoxy when the lip is inserted in the slot to strengthen the bond. The kind of epoxy you use is also important. 5 min quick cure epoxy is not waterproof and it will also turn an ugly brown color, so I don't use it. 30 minute epoxy is stronger, waterproof, and will not turn brown. A slow cure paste epoxy like Rod Bond is even better, IMO. That's what I use on my lips.

I cut lip slots on a scroll saw whose kerf is too thin for the Lexan lips I use. Cut the slot immediately after cutting out the basic lure shape, while the blank is still "square" and keep a scrap piece of Lexan by the saw so you can widen the original cut for a perfect fit. Another trick I found when installing a lip in a slot that is much too large (for instance if you're replacing a broken lip and have to hog out the slot to get the old one out): epoxy putty logs used for furniture repair and available at your local home center work great. Fill the slot with putty and then push the lip in. You have about 2 minutes before the epoxy begins to harden to adjust the lip. For lips that fit properly in the slot, I use slow cure epoxy paste (Rod Bond) that is sold for rod grip construction to glue them. The paste is thicker than liquid epoxy, not as thick as epoxy putty. It takes 4-5 hrs to begin hardening, giving you plenty of time to fool around with lip adjustment, but it is stiff enough when mixed to hold a lip in position, and it will not leak out of the slot like liquid epoxy can. Liquid epoxy, paste epoxy, epoxy putty - all great stuff for building lures! Installing the lip is really when you find out how symmetrical your bait body is and whether all the hardware is centered as is should be. If the body is not symmetrical or the hardware is not centered, it's almost impossible to get a lip aligned properly. I've tried several alignment methods. If your lip has a centering dot marked on its end with a Sharpie, you can sight down the tail and belly hangers and the line should hit the dot if it is centered. I sometimes use a laser level light to do this. More often, I just flip the bait over on its belly and make sure that equal amounts of lip protrude on each side of the bait. And if the protruding lip segments aren't exactly alike in shape, that's an indication that the lip is angled up or down on one side.

Hey, I've made baits that did this before..... it wasn't on purpose though! Beauty is as beauty DOES, I guess, but the line tie doesn't immediately make me want to run out and buy an Arashi, at least until Tree_Fish starts posting some pics of Texas hogs he caught using his.

I like to paint my jigging spoons and had the same problem of damaging the finish when installing the split rings. If it wasn't the finish, it was the split ring that got mangled. It was particularly a problem because I like to fish 3/4 oz jigging spoons that tend to have thicker bodies. Now I use the same coatings regimen as Ben: sanding, acrylic paint, DN. No primer (it's usually too soft and will react badly with DN because it contains solvent). Using DN as a topcoat helps a lot because it is so tough and slick - so does using larger rings and split ring pliers. You can also install the rings before you begin painting the spoon and then clean them off after the finish is complete with a Dremel tool and a micro drill bit. I never liked installing split rings in thick spoons with just holes drilled in the body. Now I only buy jigging spoons with wire line ties molded into them and the only body-drilled spoons I ever mess with are the large flutter spoons.

I like Rapalas more than most brands because quite a few of their models fish really well. To me, that doesn't mean Rapala "can do no wrong". Pressure to put out new models every year wears on most companies. I don't care for the "Clackin Rap" series for the same reason A-Mac cites, don't see anything special in the Crankin Rap series, and have my doubts about the Scatter Raps too, based on briefly fishing a couple of them. My question of "Why balsa in a BX Swimmer?" is that I just don't see what function the balsa has. But I'm not so confident of my limited expertise that I would state: "There can be none". Whatever the design, the only thing that counts in the end is how well and how often it catches fish.

Nice looking lures but I have to ask myself... if the exterior is a tough unbreakable polycarbonate shell, why the balsa? Why not something even lighter, like AIR? It does look like it has a moderate amount of roll - which I like in a bait.

I think BassPro sells something called a hook bonnet, made from plastic that fits over the whole treble hook. I've bought swimbaits that come with integral hooks covered by plastic tubing. It's a pain in the butt to remove the tubing before fishing them, and that's just single hooks.

I started with modifications to some wood baits. Then tried repainting some really ugly wood baits I saw in the $2 gimme bin at Walmart. Awhile later, I got disappointed with the quality and durability of some commercial balsa baits I was fishing - thought a $15 bait should last longer than one day - so began building my own and got caught up in the idea that you could make any wood bait bait design you can imagine as long as you learn the skills and have the initiative and patience needed to do it right. It took me a few years to develop the skill and patience aspects. Then I realized that I will never learn everything there is to know about building crankbaits - so it's a hobby that can challenge you for a lifetime - the best kind of hobby IMO. I come from a family of retailers and know the pros/cons of business and dealing with customers. Some guys get a kick (and income) out of selling their creations but to me, it would just ruin a treasured hobby. The way I like to hand build baits is not translatable into a production environment where time is money. So that aspect of building just doesn't interest me.

begs, to paint virgin plastic cranks, I clean it with some denatured alcohol, paint it, then coat the bait with one coat of Devcon Two Ton epoxy. If you use other brands of epoxy you might want to use multiple coats depending on the thickness of the coating. For repainting plastic, I follow the same scheme but scuff up the existing finish with sand paper before starting, or else entirely remove the existing finish, just depending on the bait and its condition.

One of the best sealers I know is D2T. You're gonna use it for topcoating, no reason not to use it for undercoating too.

One thing I've done with Devcon is mixed up a batch and then had to 'scrape the barrel' for the last lure - which failed to cure because I had not really mixed ALL the components in every crevice of the mixing container. Sounds like that may have happened to you. Personally, I don't ever thin a batch with more than a few drops of denatured alcohol. You need some clearcoat thickness to really protect the lure and make a beautiful finish. If I wanted thinner, I'd use Etex and be willing to wait extra hours for the cure time.

Dick Nite S81 moisture cured urethane is the best dipping clearcoat I've ever used - tough, glossy, slick, thin like a factory finish. BUT it is difficult to store without hardening and takes a lot of preventative care to keep it liquid. If you dip a lot of lures in 4-5 months, I think it's acceptable. It dries to the touch in a couple of hours but requires several days for the moisture cure to develop. You can dip lures, let them dry and then mail them the next day to cure en route A late entry into the clearcoat race is Solarez, a UV cured polyester resin that cures in 3 minutes under a UV light. Some guys report they like it a lot, some say they get a milky haze which is especially noticeable on dark paint. It is dip-able but I got sheeting when I tried it. I feel the jury's still out on Solarez but if you want quick...

To the original question, yes wobble is subjective to some extent. I don't fish walleyes so can't comment there but when I compare bass baits, I want a sharp regular thump that I can feel through the rod tip - the sharper and more distinct the better. In the case where "the other guy" was catching and you weren't, sometimes it is impossible to hone in on what is making the difference unless you really look at ALL the critical variables. Is your bait diving to the same depth? Are they being worked at the same speed? Is yours the same size bait? Same color? If those factors are identical to "the other guy's", then you can forget them and look at the wobble. Baits that seem almost identical via casual observation can have very different actions. For instance, I've never found a knock-off to have the same action as an original bait. It may catch fish in its own right or it may not, but it's always different. It's a complicated can of worms and it can be quite difficult to isolate a cause unless you can control all the critical variables - which most of us rarely if ever do.

I haven't used glitter GLUE but I do use the cheap glitter paint that comes in a clear acrylic from my local hobby retailer. It's too thick as it comes out of the bottle so I squeeze a little into a shot glass and thin it with water before brushing it on.

The balsa I've used for some time now is very light 'competition balsa' which is about as strong as styrofoam and requires significant reinforcement, both exterior and interior to make a durable bait. My hardware is long enough that the terminal ends of the line tie, belly hanger, and tail hanger are not very far apart once the bait is assembled, so I'm using about the same amount of epoxy that would be used in a true thru-wire bait when I glue it together. Basically I just don't see how a continuous thru-wire frame offers a significant advantage on a bass bait where the halves are 100% glued together. If a bass is ever strong enough to tear a balsa bait in half - he can have the tail and the treble hook for a souvenir. No takers so far.

Can't speak to the possibility of MCU reacting with glue but if it were me, I'd slap that thing in the MCU and let it hang. I never had good results using epoxy on spoons because it would quickly chip off at any sharp edge. If any solvent in the glue has evaporated, you shouldn't have a problem.

Epoxy resin is sort of like honey - it can crystallize in the container, especially in cold weather. But just like honey, you can make it liquid again if you heat it up in hot water or in a microwave.

I'd use #8 on the 1/8 oz and #4 on the 1/2 oz spoon. Some #8's are just too small for anything. Gamakatsu #8's are right-sized and are excellent quality trebles.

I like the idea of thru-wiring but it's a PITA to get the wire harness correct in every dimension. The main thing to me is reinforcing the balsa bait with a tough epoxy backbone. I don't feel the wire harness needs to be one piece since it is firmly imbedded in the backbone - so I just use longer than normal twisted wire hangers fitted in grooves in the balsa so the halves of the bait can be fitted together without pressure. I've never had a bait fail or a piece of hardware pull out, so that seems "good enough for government work". Almost all of the balsa bait failures I've seen are the head breaking off above the lip slot when the baits were slapped on the water to remove weeds. True thru-wiring won't prevent that.

Travis, that's a great explanation with pics! I'm not a lure designer, can't draw freehand for crap and I'm not a hydrodynamics engineer with a Cray computer in my basement, so I almost always start with a popular commercial bait that I've fished and like. Calipers, a millimeter rule, a digital scale, and close observation are your best friends when you want to use an existing bait as the basis for a new crankbait. I'll usually build a few true clones to start, then tweak the design in subsequent builds to get a bait customized for me.

First, kudos to you for managing to get 5 minute epoxy on a lure without it hardening. But yes, you messed up. Aside from the performance concerns above (with which I agree), quick cure epoxy cures too fast to level out and make the beautiful topcoat that Devcon Two Ton or another slow cure epoxy will. In my experience, 5 min Devcon doesn't just yellow, it turns an ugly brown pretty quickly when exposed to sunlight. I won't use it anywhere on a bait that will show after painting. Even a little squeeze-out from a lip installation looks ugly. The only place I use it nowadays is to rejoin the halves of a balsa bait after thru-wiring. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised when you get your hands on a slow cure epoxy - it's much easier to apply and works way better,